A primary challenger to Congressman Matt Gaetz who is linked to Speaker McCarthy has emerged on the eve of the filing deadline for congressional candidates in Florida, apparently rounding out the roster of McCarthy-backed challengers to those who ousted him from the speakership last year.

Since Mr. McCarthy resigned from Congress at the end of last year,  the former speaker has been linked to GOP primary candidates across the country who are challenging incumbents who supported his ouster.

In March, the county supervisor of Yavapai County, Jack Smith, announced that he was running against an Arizona congressman, Eli Crane, who was an outspoken opponent of Mr. McCarthy.

On April 26, just ahead of the filing deadline for congressional primary candidates in Florida, a retired Navy officer, Aaron Dimmock, filed to appear on the Republican primary ballot in the First Congressional District, a seat currently occupied by Mr. Gaetz.

According to filings, the treasurer for Mr. Dimmock’s campaign, Maria Wojciechowski, is also the treasurer for the American Patriots PAC, a committee aligned with the former speaker. 

Since Mr. Dimmock entered the race, Mr. Gaetz has leveled an unceasing string of attacks against the challenger, criticizing him for a series of posts on LinkedIn that Mr. Dimmock made in support of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, as reported by the Daily Caller.

In one post, Mr. Dimmock said, “We remain committed to making it better,” reposting an image from the Chapman and Co. Leadership Institute, which he led,  in which the company promised a variety of measures to support inclusion.

On LinkedIn, Mr. Dimmock was part of the wave of senior executives who, in addition to voicing support for diversity and inclusion, also reposted posts in support of Black Lives Matter and other civil rights movements.

“I knew former Representative McCarthy would be getting a puppet of his to run,” Mr. Gaetz said in a post. “I didn’t know it would be a Woke Toby Flenderson,” Mr. Gaetz added, referencing a character from the TV show “The Office” who was in charge of human resources.

Mr. Dimmock has also drawn scrutiny for questions surrounding his residency in the state of Florida. His LinkedIn page listed him as living in Missouri, though his paperwork listed his residency at Pensacola.

According to Mr. Dimmock’s voting records, he is registered to vote at Orange Park, Florida, and has been since 2003. He is also the current director for leadership programs at the University of West Florida’s Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz Center for Leadership.

“DEI Dimmock will find Northwest Florida quite unreceptive to his BLM enthusiasm,” Mr. Gaetz said in a post.

While Mr. McCarthy has been recruiting candidates to primary many of the GOP representatives who ousted him from the speakership, Mr. Gaetz, the leader of the group, appears to be the subject of Mr. McCarthy’s focus. When he was still in Congress, Mr. McCarthy frequently exchanged insults with Mr. Gaetz, and the two men almost got into a fistfight on the House floor. Mr. Gaetz was the member who made the “motion to vacate” that ultimately ended Mr. McCarthy’s brief speakership. Mr. McCarthy then chose to resign his seat.

During an event at Georgetown University at Washington, D.C., earlier in April, Mr. McCarthy accused Mr. Gaetz of sabotaging his speakership over his refusal to end an ethics investigation against Mr. Gaetz.

“I’ll give you the truth why I’m not speaker,” Mr. McCarthy said. “Because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old, an ethics complaint that started before I ever became speaker. And that’s illegal and I’m not gonna get in the middle of it.”

Mr. Gaetz has repeatedly denied these allegations, and has given his own explanation for why he supported removing Mr. McCarthy as speaker, accusing the former speaker of being untrustworthy.

“The reason Kevin McCarthy went down today is because nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy,” Mr. Gaetz told reporters after voting to oust Mr. McCarthy. “Kevin McCarthy has made multiple contradictory promises, and when they all came due, he lost votes of people who maybe don’t even ideologically agree with me on everything.”

Mr. Gaetz was told last year by the Department of Justice that he is no longer under investigation for sex trafficking, but the House ethics probe continues.